Punch-Drunk Love staggers its way to dissapointment

Since the release of Sydney in 1996, P. T. Anderson has emerged as one of the premier American auteurs. Along with a small crop of wunderkind, including Wes Anderson and Spike Jonze, Anderson employs techniques that make his films distinctly his own -- a remarkable quality altogether lacking in the majority of commercial cinema. While his Boogie Nights and Magnolia lacked control, Anderson's sincere, pleading and often beguiling style more than compensated. His films can be emotionally exhausting, but are never without their rewards.

At a scant 89 minutes, (compared to Magnolia's hefty 188 and Boogie Nights' 152) I had hoped that Punch-Drunk Love would mark an evolutionary milestone in Anderson's career. Such was not the case. While the film is seductive, enticing and teeming with a near irresistible ooey-gooey goofy goodness, it's as sloppily plotted as its predecessors, only shorter.

In Magnolia, Anderson's camera would linger on his characters' faces in deliberate contemplation. The overall effect was a pensive, novelistic tone so commanding that it almost justified the film's overlong running time. In Punch-Drunk Love, the same strategy feels half-baked and inapt. This time, the drawn out sequences punctuate a plot that never takes off, thus really punctuating nothing at all.

Part of the problem is that Punch-Drunk Love is a character study of, ultimately, simplistic characters. The story centers on Adam Sandler, who plays Barry Egan, a novelty plunger salesman who is half-man/half-boy, so stunted in his emotional growth by seven niggling sisters that he still confuses the words "good" and "food." Much the archetypal Sandler character, Barry is prone to paroxysms of violence, a fact initially thrust upon us in a shocking sequence that has Sandler kick out his sister's plate glass windows in front of gawking family members.

What could have been a shattering introduction to Egan's mind instead becomes self-evident and ostentatious as Anderson monotonously pounds a slender nail with an oversized hammer, one seemingly too big for his hands. Berry Egan is hardly a one-dimension character, but he isn't three-dimensional either. Rather, he's two-dimensional, oscillating between dual personalities, which are so exaggerated and affected that they couldn't sustain an entire movie by themselves. Combined, they don't produce a gestalt, but a character easily divisible into his facile parts.

Enter Lena (played by Emily Watson), a woman who galvanizes Barry to differentiate himself from his siblings once and for all. There are times when Sandler plays off of her to great effect. For example, when she tells Barry (whose haplessness is beyond obvious at this point) how his sister gleefully related stories of his awkward childhood, the look on Sandler's face hits a comedic note so precise it evokes Keaton.

But we have to wonder why she's interested in Barry in the first place. Her past is not explicated and her sentiments never suggest she's anything other than an all-loving universal mother.

But perhaps that's what Barry needs. If so, then what's the plot here -- boy needs perfect girl, boy finds perfect girl? Po-mo parables for destiny aside, I don't buy it. Anderson has remarked that Punch-Drunk Love is an "art house Adam Sandler movie." But even Veronica Vaughn wasn't so easily won.

Additionally, critics have lauded Sandler's performance as complex and nuanced, but his character is no different from Billy Madison. There's no subtlety here, folks.

From the symbolic opening car crash, which like Barry Egan's outbursts, screeches forth from a reticent calm, we know we're in for a wild ride. Sandler doesn't disappoint. But as for expanding his range, Punch-Drunk Love does about as much as The Waterboy.

Perhaps Anderson was trying to make the romantic comedy of the future. The score would seem to agree -- it combines, with mesmerizing results, conventional love ditties (including a song from Altman's Popeye) with minimalist synth-pop concoctions so odd that they might play at tomorrow's raves.

But the film as a whole doesn't leave us as much mesmerized as it does disappointed. Anderson is a filmmaker overflowing with kinetic energy. But with Punch-Drunk Love, all he shows is potential.